Boehner's gamble: Could it cost him his job?

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The bruising roll call tally — coming on the heels of a weeklong revolt — had some GOP members asking privately whether John Boehner can hold on to his leadership post.
AP Photo

Democrats dismiss the charge as nonsense — as a Pelosi aide said, members vote on bills, not speeches.

And the fact remains that a majority of Democrats stood with Pelosi while a majority of Republicans put distance between themselves and Boehner.

On some level, the problem was a lack of discipline. House Republicans lack the clear leadership chain that characterized their tenure in the majority under DeLay. The member-to-member relationships were much closer, so the whips typically had a better sense where votes stood before heading to the floor.

Boehner lacks the heft of former Speaker Dennis Hastert, who could always flip a few core votes in the final days before a tough roll call, and his party lacks any other heavy now that President Bush has only a few months left in office.

As the House prepared to vote Monday, Boehner delivered an astonishingly nonpartisan speech, telling the members who had already assembled on the House floor: “I don’t know that they get much tougher than this. No one wants to vote for this.”

When he finished, Boehner got more applause from Democrats than Republicans. He strode up the aisle and back to the cloakroom to wait for the vote to begin.

During the vote, Boehner walked the floor by himself, gently jawboning wavering colleagues when he could. But he did not seem to turn any votes, and the numbers grew steadily against him.

By Monday afternoon, staff members in the offices of Republican leaders were blaming one another for the failed vote.

Blunt said he had come to the floor thinking 75 Republicans would support the plan. He was off by 10 — just short of the 12 that were needed to turn defeat into victory.

But Boehner told a different story. He said that the GOP leaders never thought they’d get more than 68 Republicans to support the bill — and that he sent Blunt to tell Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) as much nearly two hours before the vote.

“I sent [Blunt] down to talk to Hoyer, 11:30, quarter to 12, somewhere in that time frame,” Boehner said. “We had a pretty good idea where we were, where we thought we could get to. And Hoyer knew.”

Boehner added: “I did not talk to [Hoyer], so I don’t know what their conversation was. [Blunt] and I had that conversation. We talked about ‘Should we just rise [walk out]?’ It wouldn’t have been good, but I thought it would have been better than this. It really doesn’t make any difference.”

Democrats, for their part, said they assumed Blunt was lowballing his whip count to force Pelosi and the Democrats to line up more votes from their members.

In the end, as Pelosi and her team tried to flip votes in favor of the proposal, there was little Boehner or his Republican leadership team could do to entice those who voted “no” to switch their tally in support of the controversial measure.

“Given the unpopularity of this whole concept, it’s amazing that we got as many votes as we did,” Boehner said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misquoted Boehner's comments about his efforts to round up Republican votes.

Readers' Comments (1652)

Whatever. I still think John McCain ought to be the titular head of the Republican Party, but it doesn't matter for me. They do need to figure out, however, just who IS in charge of the Republican Party right now, and organize and them. Is it Bush? McCain? Boehner? Honestly they have no idea right now. Fix that first, then we can worry about the rest. But for the disciplined, supposedly-unified party, they have quite a bit of disunity and massive disorganization right now. Please pick some one, put them in charge, and we can move forward.

But orderly isn't the same as cheap. To get Citigroup to absorb Wachovia, the FDIC agreed to share the risk on a $312 billion portfolio of loans (Citi has to eat the first $42 billion in potential losses; anything above that hits the FDIC fund).- By Justin Fox Monday, Sep. 29, 2008 TIME.COM

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this 1/3 of the money that Hank Paulson asked for? Why do I get the feeling that this is gonna be ALOT more expensive then we are currently led to believe?

Well, if Nancy Pelosi would have kept her mouth shut, the bill may have passed. You can't get up on your high horse and lecture Congress right before asking Republicans to take a chance on something their constituents do not want passed. I bet some Republicans reluctantly went along with the bill in the spirit of bipartisanship. Then Pelosi spoke and destoryedt he bipartisanship. And some think Bush is a moron.

If House Republicans really did vote against this because of what Pelosi said, they should all be lined up and shot. That's the most **** poor excuse I've ever heard in my life! This would include foremost Eric Cantor, who I personally saw hold up Pelosi's speach and use it as an excuse! We can all tell our children, while we're in the labor camp tents, ten years from now that there was once a Republican party. But not anymore. First they drove away the hispanic vote, their only counter to the black vote, by railing against immigration. Now, they've railed against an terrible necessity by claiming it would be socialism?? Cmon! Americans savings and retirement are at stake. Our childrens future is at stake! Get a grip and do your job, that's why we elected you. If it was easy kids would be doing it. Oh, I'm sorry....Kids are doing it.

Politico shouldn't you have Nancy Pelosi's name in place of Boehner's name in this story? Nancy is like poison in the blood stream of this great nation. If she's the face of the Democrat party then it's a pretty ugly face. Never seen any American that is as poisionous and intolerant then her...................SHE should resign. Will can never bring America together with someone like that in leadership....just the facts.

You might want to check out the info on Rick Davis and Fannie and Freddie. Seems like they were still paying his firm $25,000 as recent as last month for nothing more than his access to John McCain. IE-lobbying. Can you explain that one?

The majority party was unable to get the minority party to pass the bill. The majority party only had 60% of the majority party vote - only 60%! The Dems couldn't get enough Dem votes to pass the bill.

Under Boehner, the Republicans were close to delivering enough minority party votes that would help pass the bill. This was after the Republicans stripped the bill of the Democrat pork like ACORN that the Dems piled onto it so that it would be acceptable to them. Boehner worked in good faith to make the bill more palatable, but in the end the hubris of the Dem House Leadership skewed every success into failure.

Authors of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae poor lending practices failed to address the issues that could have helped to pass the bill. Barney Frank has never acknowledged his mistaken politics concerning Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. It is outrageous that Nancy Pelosi would say that Republican decisions influenced an 'anything goes' market. Revision of history doesn't cut it. The Democrat failure is immense and ongoing in the face of this crisis.

Pelosi's Dems face tight races in their home states. They will be losing their jobs if they fool around with their taxpayers' money. They will lose to Republicans. Boehner won't be losing his job.

You might want to check out the info on Rick Davis and Fannie and Freddie. Seems like they were still paying his firm $25,000 as recent as last month for nothing more than his access to John McCain. IE-lobbying. Can you explain that one?

Sounds like someone was stupid enough to pay him. I support a complete and thorough independent investigation with all guily parties paying huge fines and/or going to jail. I am not partisan on this issue, however, most people believe that it was the "bad" loans that should not have ever been made that caused the problem. I like to look at who pushed to have more "bad loans" created.

If you have video of Republicans enacting legislation or lobbying for these bad loans, please provide it!

Wait a second. What about the Botox withered stick from San Franscisco, the smarmy fat old queen from Boston, the big moutherd Jewish lawyer from NY and the Irish drunk from Conn.? I thought Ms. Pelosi had the votes or should have had the votes. Who needs Republicans when you have all those masters of the universe on your side.

I watched your video and I didn't see Congress force them to do anything. Ignorance maybe, but not willful coercion into bad mortages. I mean, did these guys honestly not know that their business was in trouble? And if so, Why didn't they say anything?

Party like it’s 1999 redux: The New York Times predicted Fannie Mae failure posted at 12:15 pm on September 29, 2008 by Ed Morrissey Send to a Friend | printer-friendly

Last Thursday, I posted a celebratory 1999 Los Angeles Times analysis of the mechanisms that created the financial collapse nine years later. Interestingly, the New York Times took a much different perspective when looking at the liberal lending policies promoted by Fannie Mae under Franklin Raines in that same year. In fact, Steven Holmes predicted that an economic downturn would create the same kind of failure seen just ten years earlier in the savings-and-loan sector:

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

Holmes noted that this appeared to be a solution in search of a problem. While lending to minority applicants still lagged behind that of white applicants, the economic boom of the 1990s had closed that gap. In the previous five years, mortgages awards to Hispanics jumped 87%, to African-Americans by 71%, and Asians 46%. Mortgages to white applicants also increased by 31%, which proved that a rising tide indeed lifted all boats, without government intervention to impose “fairness”.

Raines’ move to further incentivize subprime lending troubled Holmes, and noted that any economic turbulence could quickly lead to disaster:

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

Now we know that Holmes and Wallison had this dead right. As long as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought subprime paper, lenders continued to profit from them, pushing them to make more and more loans to unqualified borrowers with no risk to themselves. Meanwhile, rather than manage the GSEs with fiscal discipline as first priority, Raines and his executives ran it as a political organization, looking to distort the market for political ends. When critics tried to point this out, Raines’ defenders — mostly Capitol Hill flacks raking in contributions from Fannie/Freddie sources — called critics and regulators bigots.

Holmes had it right in 1999. One might expect the New York Times to point this out a little more often. Instead, they continue to echo Barack Obama and blame “greed” for the failure. There may have been greed at the bottom of this — but it was greed for political power. (via Power Line)